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Showdown looms over abortion pill
 The abortion pill is legal in 30 nations, including the U.S., where it is advertised on the New York subway. YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Australia's federal lawmakers have a rare chance to vote outside party lines this week and go with their conscience on what has become a fevered debate on abortion. The debate is looking at whether to free up the use of an abortion pill, which is effectively controlled at the moment by Australia's health minister who is Catholic and opposes abortion. Surgical abortion is already legal in Australia, with as many as 80,000 operations each year, but that hasn't stopped an often heated and personal debate. Two years ago, Australia's Health Minister Tony Abbott, a former Catholic seminarian, said the nation needed a debate on abortion. Now he has it over RU-486, a French-developed abortion pill now legal in 30 countries including the United States, but not used in Australia under a law that leaves it's use in the health minister's control. The pill blocks the progesterone hormone, and when used with another drug, called prostaglandin, can be used to terminate a pregnancy up to seven weeks. Four women from across the political spectrum have challenged the minister's control over the pill, sparking a debate that has at times been intensely personal, with two senators telling of their own experiences of abortion. In a two-day debate that lasted longer than one over recent terror laws, Australia's Upper House, called the Senate, voted 45 to 28 last week to have RU-486 treated legally like any other drug. This means control over the abortion pill, also known as mifepristone, would be taken away from the health minister and go to the country's main drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). The TGA has the power to approve or deny the use of all other drugs in the country, but the parliament voted in 1996 to transfer the power of approval for RU-486 to the health minister. Most analysts have said moving the control from Abbott would clear the way for its approval as the group would likely follow other nations around the world. Tougher fightThis week the debate shifts to a tougher fight in the lower house, where Prime Minister John Howard has said he will oppose any change. For his part, Abbott has warned of an "epidemic" of abortions in Australia if the drug is taken out of his control. But supporters of the pill argue that the minister is not trained nor qualified to evaluate the safety or efficacy of drugs. What's more, they say the pill is less invasive and cheaper than surgical abortions and women should be have a right to choose. One co-sponsor of the bid to change the law, Democratic leader in the Senate Lyn Allison, told parliament last week that one in three women have had abortions and she was one of them. "It is galling listening to the men, and it is mostly men, who have such contempt for women who terminate unwanted pregnancies, who have neither compassion nor understanding of the huge and, for many, daunting task of taking an embryo the size of a grain of rice to adulthood," she said earlier. Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, she said making it easier to have an abortion would not translate into more abortions and education was key in preventing unwanted pregnancies. If the politicians were guided by the polls, there would be no question. Almost two thirds of Australians support legal abortion and a similar proportion support the removal of this abortion drug from the health minister's control. Still, the debate will be a close call, with a survey of parliamentarians published in an Australian newspaper on Sunday showing that 63 of the 150 members of the lower house would vote in favor of the bill, while 27 said they were definitely opposed. The remaining 60 members of parliament were undecided or did not want to comment publicly, the newspaper said. CNN's Hugh Riminton contributed to this report. 
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